I had success this weekend Googling in hunting links between complexity theory and evaluation. First I found a publication of a foundation which has centered its funding strategy around complexity and something called the panarchy cycle. And for evaluation it recommends “development evaluation.”

The publication is on the web. Search for Katharine A. Pearson. (2007). “Accelerating our impact: Philanthropy, innovation and social change.” Montreal, Quebec, Canada: The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation.

The second “clue” is a book listed in the publication: Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Q. Patton. Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed. Toronto: Random House. 2006.

So I Googled the book and found sufficient reviews to say it is on the mark for what I was looking for. Plus I found the title ironic, considering my work for Abe Wandersman and his “Getting to Outcomes” framework.

Here’s the blurb from the inside front cover of the book:

“WARNING: This book is not for heroes or saints
or perfectionists.
This book is for flawed people (and we are all flawed
in one way or another) who are not happy with the way things
are and would like to make a difference.
This book is for ordinary people who want to make
connections that create extraordinary outcomes.”

Now Michael Quinn Patton is an old familiar name. I Googled him and bingo. I find a PowerPoint which not only links evaluation to complex adaptive systems but goes into Snowden’s Cynefin framework. It’s on a web site in Oslo, Norway! And dated May, 2008.

In his slides, he illustrates the differences among simple, complicated and complex. The simple is baking a cake - quite easily replicable; the complicated is putting a man on the moon - very tricky, but the more you do it, the better you get; and the complex is raising a child - just because you successfully raised the first does not mean the same approach will work with the next. It is interactive and ever-changing.

Patton, by the way, has a fourth edition of his evaluation text, Utilization-Focused Evaluation in which he discusses not only complexity but the panarchy cycle and developmental evaluation. I should have remembered that Patton is quoted rather extensively in Pawson and Tilley’s Realistic Evaluation. In fact I should have remembered that Pawson-Tilley approach is an evaluation method suitable for complexity. They don’t mention it as such, but with its attention to context and to the autonomy of actors/agents it fits very well with complexity characteristics.

To top all this off, I find a fourth link that ties Patton and Snowden together by a researcher that had not been mentioned so far. Patricia J. Rogers has an article in an evaluation journal describing some of her work (and her colleagues’) on the “Stronger Families and Community Strategy,” a funding program of the Australian government: Rogers, P. J., Stevens, K. & Boymal, J. (2009). “Qualitative cost-benefit evaluation of complex, emergent programs. Evaluation and Program Planning, 32(1): 83-90. In their references, they cite (Kurtz and) Snowden and Patton.

Can you spot a theme here? All except Patton live in a British Commonwealth nation. Snowden is Welsh; the McConnell Foundation is in Montreal, Canada; Frances Westley is a professor at McGill University, also in Montreal; Brenda Zimmerman is a professor at York University, Toronto; and Patricia Rogers is a professor at RMIT University, Australia. They are all consultants, have worked in various countries and have worked for their governments.

So where’s the Americans? Except for the Department of Defense (DoD), complex adaptive systems is nonexistent to our federal government. I guess we’ll have to wait another ten to twenty years for CAS thinking to transfer from the military to the civilians. Remember “operations research” and Tang?